Sorry, I should have been following this thread in much more detail, but I've barely had time to read Digests once a week at present.
"Pavic", as used to describe a language spoken by NPCs in "Sun
County", seems to me to be a variant of Sartarite, for reasons already
given.
"Old Pavic" I'm quite sure is a different language. I'd assumed that it
underwent drastic change when the dragons took their secrets back
and the EWF went under, but hadn't bothered to work out any more
than that. I'll go back to lurking, and wait for the rest of you to tell me
what it was like. Pentan and Trade, with added farts... sounds
fascinating so far!
And while I'm delurking for a few minutes...
"Kirk" does indeed mean "church". And I believe William Church was
an artist who worked on some of the very early RQ products. There is a
suspicious similarity betwen his name and the town of Wilmskirk, in
Sartar. This, rather than the word "kirk", is why the place-name has to
be treated with great suspicion as a source of information about what
Gloranthan langauges really sound like.
I think it's fair to say that anyone trying to deduce a logical underlying linguistic structure to Glorantha is doomed to disappointment. You'll find an amazing collection of bad puns, but Greg's talents differ from those of Tolkein.
In fact.... how many Glorantha names, of people or places, are *not* bad puns or purely descriptive? I suspect some are just in-jokes I haven't yet got? We know Nochet, Corflu, Wilmskirk: anyone got an explanation for "Pavis"? (The shield, usually spelt with an "e" on the end?) Or "Sartar"?
In reply to "Gazza"'s question about dates: much of the original RQ2 material was set around 1616. Some RQ3 bits were set either then, or a bit later: 1621 is a popular date. The original Snake-Pipe Hollow was, I'm told, set pre-1613, although given the content the date hardly matters. And you can set your own campaign whenever you want to, of course. Though if you want to build up your PCs before letting them at some of the high-level date specific stuff, I'd suggest going back a bit. Personally I'm GMing in 1598: the Lunars have not yet taken Sartar, much less Pavis, and I hope the players will feel a real grievance against them when they kill all the NPCs they've known for years.
I know of a few shops who claim to have the Glorantha box still in stock, but I don't know if they ship outside the UK.
Jane Williams jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #140
Powered by hypermail